Starting our kitchen! (aka: livin' my dream)

We've been super busy, doing super awesome things (what's new, right?).

I got a job. An awesome job, that's just 3 days a week. I work at a Teen Center. I can either hang out with the teens, or not. I am setting up an art class. There are no teens here right now.. and there haven't been any here at all today.. but the center is brand new, so hopefully it'll pick up. Besides, I wanted to update my blog at a leisurely rate, so it's all for the best.

We've started our kitchen wall! We are now including a curved wall in the back of the room, where we'll put a built in couch. We always planned on the couch, but never planned on making the wall curve around it! This was exciting. More exciting than any job could ever be. Here is the kitchen wall. One row of tires done, thanks to Dain! Who doesn't have a new job, or a part time job, but that good old full time house building job. I have two part time jobs, one where I get paid. One where I throw my back out 3 or 4 days of the week swinging a sledge hammer.

And thanks to the Teen Center's lack of attendance, here are some mock-up's of our "floor plans." A lot of people are still in the dark about what our house is going to look like. I mean, to some extent we are, a little, sometimes. The plans change constantly too. Never for the worse though. Some people have even thought that we were done. Let me tell you this: There is no way in hell I would live in one room for the rest of my life! We are building three more full rooms (bigger than the first even), a greenhouse, and a bathroom. Not to mention an outdoor patio with a BRICK OVEN! I'm not kidding! A brick oven. You, my friends will always be welcome over for pizza pies. And our roof is plastic right now! We're estimating that we'll get a real one around the end of summer. We're thinking of making it bright orange, but that's still up for decision.

From Kitchen!!

Anyways, here are the mock-ups.. to hopefully clarify a little.. (you could also go back to the beginning of the blog and read it, because I did go into a lot of detail over the last year...!) Oh, and our neighbor found a dead bobcat down the road. He told me that if I had the stomach for it, that I should go grab it. I did. We road bikes down there and got it. It was pretty messed up, but super amazing looking. We were afraid it would have diseases WWII would catch, so Dain buried it. We'll dig it up for the skeleton in a half year or so. Oh, and it's spring. Which means that winter never happened. I love New Mexico.

From Spring! Again!

Alas, back to the "grind." I'm going to go work on a sewing project I brought.

2500 Gallons of fun!

We bought our cistern! Hurray! It was very expensive for us. Yet worth every penny. This cistern is going to provide our water for the rest of our life. The cistern holds 2500 gallons. We will need to get a second one eventually. But this will be what we have for at least the next few years. Look how huge it is! We were told it weighs 400 pounds! We thought it would be difficult to get from the end of the driveway to the house, which is about 1/8 a mile. It wasn't at all though! It practically rolled itself half the way. The other half took only a small amount of effort. Standing it up and getting it into place was the most difficult part, but nothing even close to "difficult." So, the two of us got it up there, no problem!

We will harvest our rainwater with it. Water will be collected off our roof, and into the cistern. From there it will gravity feed into a series of filters. Then it will go into a pressure tank.. Or the other way around, I'm not sure actually. But we wont be doing that until (probably) next winter. It's an above ground cistern. This means that if we want to bury it (which we do), we have to put tire walls around it to support the dirt, so the dirt doesn't push into the cistern walls. The plastic is about 1/2 an inch think.

We had such an awesome day of friends helping us on Saturday! Three friends from ABQ came and dug dug dug. They also pounded, and moved dirt too! It was such a relief to have some help. The first help we've had all winter. The summer was great, friends showing up to help left and right. Luckily that's right around the corner again. Our neighbor, who has been super helpful and awesome, also showed up and helped us connect the cistern to the water pipe. Without him, we would have listen to the guys at the hardware store, and really botched this one up. We really got lucky with our awesome neighbors. Nick and Nora moved dirt from the "kitchen" all day long. It looks great! We're about 75% done with moving the dirt. Unfortunately, moving the dirt is much easier than leveling it off for the room. But man oh man, what a great start! I'm so excited! It looks like the kitchen will get its roof in much less time than I originally thought. If we skipped burying the house, we could have it done in 3 or 4 months! But, I think we'll stick to the plan, and bury the side and back of this thing so that it starts holding a much more constant temperature.

busy busy busy

Finishing the First U

We've been hot. We've been busy. We've been tired. Never have we been so sweaty. We have nearly completed digging out the first "U's" trench. This is where the first wall will go. The wall of our kitchen. The rest of the room will be dug out while we are filling the tires with dirt.

Here is a view of the floorplan. This might change over the course of our construction. But for now, we're pretty dead set on building this thing. It is actually pretty close to scale.

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And if you are interested in speedy weight loss and muscle gain I highly recommend digging a 20 foot by three foot hole into rock solid ground. This hole should be two feet and up to five feet deep in some places. Here is the expletive trench:

And of course, some tires that will soon be walls.

In other news, we are not only sweating. We are enjoying the heavenly land in which we live on. Everything couldn't have been more perfect for a party we hosted the other night for our Albuquerque farmer friends.

And a beautiful sunset to wrap this entry up. More later! Much to do here in the greater northern New Mexico region!

From Shack Living